Suggestion to make SotA server ownership available for a fee.

A good "how do you do" to you all once more, Novians!

Lately, I've been doing a lot of brainstorming about Shroud of the Avatar, and I have come up with an idea.

What if Portalarium charged a one time fee to allow someone to make their own Shroud of the Avatar server?

How this would work is that Portalarium would design the software to be as user friendly as they can. A person would then pay a fee to become an owner of their own version of the game. They could then change the mechanics to suit their tastes, and then do their own advertising for their server etc. The server owner could choose to run their own donation model to pay for their advertisement and development.

What would really make this innovative in my opinion is if we could also figure out a way to make it so any Avatar from any server could party with perhaps friends who play on other servers.

To make this possible, each server would need to do a name check to ensure no two names were alike across every server. But, more importantly, in order to protect each individual economy, no items would be able to be brought from one server to another, and any Avatar traveling to another server would automatically have their level halved or set to zero. This would prevent someone coming from a "test center" style server with max skills from then going to another server to farm resources for their Avatar on another server. These preventative measures of course are very basic and need to be improved on, but just brainstorming here.

To me, this seems like it falls into the category of natural progression of gaming technology and innovation that our very own Lord British is so famous for. I think this type of thing is right up Portalarium's alley. But could it work? Would it be profitable for Portalarium? I've seen UO freeshards make quite a bit of money via donation models, Portalariums fee could be set quite high and still the new owner could make a profit off their own advertising. We would also then have more people advertising to more markets, ultimately bringing more players to the game. Avatars could switch servers and switch back, or just come from one server to another for an event.

Seems like it might work, but what do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Cheers!

 

With all due respect, I don't think it's a good plan.
That's an end of life move & there's more to be evolved here... Including the player base & proposed fixes/additions.
It's too soon.............

 

Interesting and good point, it being too soon. I would definitely say that having mounts in first would be ideal, to say the least. But what if future content updates were made available to server owners? Would that change your mind?

 

i like this idea a lot.

i would love to branch off the current code base and make my own modifications and tweaks. and fix all the things that i wish were fixed. replace all the generic icons with unique icons. etc, etc..

my own little sandox world that i can tweak and modify to my own preferences!

potential to be a new revenue model!

 

Since we have POTs and soon player made dungeons. Why don't we take a page from Second Life? Rent out regions to people, they can design what they want, port helps set it up? Of course the downside is you can't follow SL/Entropia too much because they allow that so the owner of it can profit from it, that doesn't fit this game. But I bet plenty of people would pay large monthly prices to 'own' their own experiences and be able to make it part of the world.

 

Basically what Blaize said.

Would be possible only changing the entire concept and the vision of the game, something not gonna happen in near future. Plus it would cost a lot, in time and resources. Its more complex than a few discussions here about this.

 

Perhaps. Then again, we've already seen what happened with Ultima Online. People simply did it themselves, and on the upside there is now a ton of custom content that has been created by players that is also free for use by anyone for that game. Perhaps getting more people out there developing content for Shroud would be cost-beneficial for Portalarium in the long term.

This by all means is a profit venture and I can forsee a multitude of ways that this could bring in more players and more money to the project, while at the same time giving people more options in terms of mechanics and playstyles.

 

Make no mistake my friends, Ultima Online freeshards were created by players who felt slighted by changes made to the game, namely the addition of Trammel. We have a significant following here on SotA who also feel slighted for one reason or another, and I believe that now is the time to be debating this. Don't be left out of the discussion!

 

nope nope nope. Nope for the same reasons that McDonalds initially had issues at the beginning of their franchising - quality control. If you allow people their own server it is going to diverge from the concept of what Port wants. So basically, its not going to happen

 

If you want your own game, then go out and create it, but don't think that stirring up trouble is going to garner my support...

 

The player base is still kinda low.


Why split us up and make even smaller groups on multiple servers?


A no vote here.

 

Well this is my point exactly, and an understatement given that the current mechanics are counter-intuitive to population.

I've played many different UO freeshards in my day and can tell you that populations are historically low on shards with no mounts, travel restrictions etc etc. It's always wonderful when a server is so populated that it ends up needing new maps to open to accommodate everyone, but it's very difficult to decide what direction to go when the population is too low to have luxuries like an oversized map and mechanics that further spread out the player base such as single player online mode.

But then, who are we to tell the developers how to design their own game? This is their project, their baby, and they are ultimately in charge of what systems and mechanics they wish to have.

This really isn't a further spreading out of the current population as much as it would be an increase in the size of the overall community. Tens of thousands of players have come and gone because we didn't provide what they were looking for. In my opinion, the current model is aimed at a minority of the market. Older gamers who played the Ultima series and watched Monty Python. That's it.

We have to start considering what assets that we do have that could be used to garner new interest, or revive interest especially to those who already know how to install and play the game. I believe this is the ultimate way to do this. I'm simply looking at MMO gaming in the overview and seeing the potential here for an updated version of UO freeshards, but one where players can actually take their character from shard to shard and developers can share content, and I believe that if anyone can pull this off, it's our dearest Lord British, the true Lord of gaming innovation, who ultimately (no pun intended) brought us all together for the first time in history, and enlightened our gaming experience with new technology like this throughout his career.

One thing that truly resonates here is that the developers have said that they've always known that they couldn't please everyone, but with this suggestion they easily can. Avatars could move from server to server where they could have items, housing and attend events on each one. They could create storylines, alter mechanics, tweak the UI to their liking and even add new content. Bag mode only servers even. I feel that then, we really would finally have our fabled "UO2" in all it's glory.

 

I see what you're getting at here, but I don't think what you propose is suitable for Sota.
Freeshards are one thing, but trying to then re-integrate players or economies from shards with different rulesets, while probably technically feasible, is a overoptimistic.
Someone makes their own server with 50x XP gain rate and tweaks all the loot and monster drops...someone else makes progression even slower and adds full pvp rules. That's fine in a vacuum, but then how do you reconcile players from these two worlds "playing together" in a way that is not absurdly imbalanced? Does someone who chooses to play on a hardcore, struggling world really want to compete with someone who plays in easy mode? I just don't get it. Why would you want to do this?

I also echo the above sentiments that free shard and player run worlds are things that tend to happen later in a game's lifespan, usually as some sort of last ditch life support. We're nowhere near that yet, and I think fracturing the community further into sub-sets is not going to help with the population issue.

We can't even get Port to split the server into a pvp server/pve server, which would solve a LOT of the arguments that happen pretty easily. So I can't really see them approving players making their own servers with their own rulesets.

 

@kaeshiva Essentially if an Avatar went to another server they would have their skills set to 0, like a brand new avatar. OR that could be at the discretion of the server owner. It's all about options, but in any case I think that items wont be able to be moved from server to server, regardless, to protect each servers economy.

In terms of balance, players used to playing on "test center" style servers (with max skills) will actually be at a disadvantage when it comes to the type of hard work it might take to progress on other servers. But I doubt anyone is going to pay money to start their own server just to make a test center anyways.

I have to say that I'm not sure where the sentiment is coming from that implies that freeshards are any type of last ditch life support. With UO, freeshards came out early in it's lifespan. At any rate though I will say that things are looking pretty grim around here if the current mechanics remain unchanged. We may be closer to the end than you think, but that's not why I suggested this.

 

Words I never thought I would hear from you, lol!

 

Lately I've been spending a good amount of time pondering on SotA and I've found a pretty good way to summarize my thoughts.

SotA is much like the UO freeshard "IPY2"

IPY2, or in por ylem 2 for those who don't know was a freeshard that was created nearly a decade ago, and was the second edition of the in por ylem series. The first in por ylem was extremely popular, especially as it came at a time when there were still plenty of people playing Ultima Online back in the day. It was created by people who always felt betrayed by the addition of Trammel to UO.

How IPY2 and SotA are similar is that both have been created under the pretense of nostalgia. "People will come play because" either IPY1 fans or in SotA's case Lord British fans. And yes, those nostalgia's did bring in the player base. HOWEVER, both games are/were mountless. Both games hinder the players progress in a way that makes the game "grindy" (low gold drops, nerfed travel etc)

In under a year, the effects of the nostalgia were depleted and the only people left were the few who didn't mind the grind. 4 people. It was a really fast death, and basically happened all at once. People suddenly knew that nobody else was coming.

So that's where this idea comes from. Having multiple servers gives everyone the ability to see for themselves why certain mechanics will or wont satisfy players. In essence, people will see cut and dry examples and therefore not need to speculate. Having one server itself is no different than having all eggs in one basket. This is principally bad.

Seeing something first hand will always be greater than any speculation. ALSO, having people need to pay a fee for the technology to create their own server will ensure that they make a good one. Suddenly the game will have a multitude of new developers, creating and adding their own content to the game, and Portalarium can just sit back and cherrypick ideas, knowing that their main server will always be the one where the good Lord British resides.

I hope this shines a new light on the idea.

 

This game is in infant/toddler. It is just starting to walk.
So no, I don't believe player run servers will happen in the next decade or more.
Why would you sell your rights to an invention, before you have capitalized on the investment?
Just my humble opinion.
I have been proved wrong before.... more than once

 

This has been my concern for awhile. I truly hope things can turn around but I fear the two things we need most right now are in short supply...time and money...

 

They can still sell servers if the official live server comes to an end.
Until then a no vote here.

 

@jammaplaya We've heard this all before, many times before... If you want to start a "Kickstarter" fund, then please do, otherwise, UO is dead let it die in peace... Beating the UO2 dead horse, again, and again, isn't going to change that...